Why everybody should be happy that Flash is finally dying

Adobe (ADBE) acknowledged the inevitable Tuesday when itannounced that it “will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020.”

That multimedia browser plug-in was once such an inescapable part of the web that Adobe thought it could persuade Apple (AAPL) to add it to the iPhone. Now-deceased Apple co-founder Steve Jobs replied in 2010 witha 1,681-word “Thoughts on Flash” post that denounced Adobe’s creation as a proprietary, insecure, buggy, and battery-eating menace to the mobile web.

Seven-plus years after the manifesto that Adobe tried to counter withpassive-aggressive newspaper ads and then mobile software that shipped late and worked poorly, its multimedia player is officially doomed on screens everywhere. That’s quite a comedown for a technology that,Adobe bragged in 2009, was on over 98% of internet-enabled desktops and played 75% of all videos viewed online.

But it’s great news if you don’t like having your computer left more vulnerable to online break-ins.

Die, Flash, die!

There are many reasons to resent Flash, some recounted at length in Jobs’ post and others left unsaid there. (Pointless animated intro pages on restaurant sites, I’m shaking my fist at you.) But the problem that ultimately sank Flash was security—something the Apple co-founder didn’t mention until more than a third of the way into his screed.

In the years after, Flash increasingly resembled the equivalent of a screen door on a submarine. As a program that originally had wide access to your machine but could be called upon by any site–or even any ad on a site–it was a tempting target for malware authors.

Five years later, astudy by McAfee, by then an Intel (INTC) subsidiary, found almost 200,000 new Flash malware samples in circulation in the first quarter of that year—a 317% increase from a year earlier. The vulnerabilities and subsequent patches have kept coming since, withseven “critical” Flash updates released so far this year.

By the end of last year, both companies had said their browsers would ignore Flash media if a site offered the same content in web-standard HTML5 code. Future versions ofChrome andEdge will make it entirely opt-in.

If web developers won’t get with the program, you should

Web developers, however, have not been so quick to get off the Flash train. Adobe’s announcement ought to get their attention in ways that third-party moves did not—although the company won’t remotely disable remaining copies of Flash in 2020, those left in circulation will then carry the stink of“abandonware” status.

Offering viewers premium content no longer qualifies as a good reason to require Flash—not whenNetflix (NFLX) andAmazon (AMZN) began offering HTML5 playback for their videos in 2015. Yet major sites like Hulu andbaseball’s MLB.tv continue to demand this fading format in desktop browsers.

Those media sites, however, at least offer phone and tablet apps that permit Flash-free viewing. What’s more annoying is seeing Flash-required sites that don’t have any Hollywood content to protect and don’t even serve up videos.

To get rid of the Flash plug-in outside of Chrome and Edge, download and run Adobe’s uninstaller forMac orWindows. If you also realize you still have the Java plug-in installed, an equally dangerous piece of code to have in your browser, take a moment to scream in horror and then ditch that Oracle (ORCL) software, using itsMac orWindows uninstaller.

That will leave locked-down versions of the player built into the Google and Microsoft browsers. They are the safest option for running Flash content today. But even then, you should take advantage ofChrome’s option to restrict Flash playback to specific sites, somethingI did two years ago: Type “chrome://settings/content/flash” into the address bar, select “Block sites from running Flash” and then allow only the sites with Flash fare you can’t live without.

Then you’ll have to hope Adobe’s news gets those laggards to act—preferably before 2020.